Conventionally various electronic component insertion machines have been provided for automatically inserting and fixedly securing, such electronic components as integrated circuits, semiconductors, registors and capacitors into the holes in a printed-circuit board in a predetermined sequence (e.g. Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 58-114494). These insertion machines are designed to convey sequentially electronic components from a cassette (stick) or to convey continuously many identical components to the insertion head. Especially when feeding integrated circuits, the components are properly oriented by way of various working stations, for example, a station for correcting deformed leads and a station for detecting the polarity and reversing it if necessary, along a carrying path extended from a taking-out device such as a cassette and a stick to an insertion head. Then, these properly oriented components are conveyed to the insertion head, inserted into the predetermined inserting position in the printed-circuit board, and fixedly secured in that position in the printed-circuit board. However, it is difficult to insert successfully all the IC (integrated circuit) components pupplied to the insertion head, and therefore, conventionally, in case where an incorrect insertion takes place, the insertion machine is stopped, the IC component incorrectly inserted is removed from the printed-circuit board, then the operation of the machine is restarted with the insertion of the next IC component for sequential operation. After all the insertions are finished, in the inserting position where the incorrect insertion has taken place, a new identical IC component is reinserted manually or by use of the insertion head. However, manual insertion has recently become difficult, since the density of ICs in the printed-circuit board has been increasing, thereby extremely reducing the clearance gap between the neighboring IC components. On the other hand, in the case of using the insertion head, the insertion head touches the neighboring IC components already secured in the holes, thus making impossible the inserting operation with the insertion head, depending on the case.
Accordingly, the present invention provides an electronic component feeder wherein in case where an incorrect insertion takes place, the IC components already fed to the carrying path are moved to a waiting position, and then, another IC component identical with the incorrectly inserted IC component is conveyed and reinserted so that the inserting operation can be continued in the predetermined sequence, and the feeder is applied to not only the aforementioned IC components but also electronic components being conveyed in each of components along the carrying path from the component taking-out device such as a cassette and a stick.